An issue to be addressed in a practical implementation of a drone (e.g., unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)) based delivery system is that the current state of the art drones have limited carrying or payload capacity. Further, drones typically have limited travel ranges.
Currently, if a particular number of orders (or products) are to be delivered at about the same time, then the same number of drones will be needed (i.e., each order will be delivered by an individual drone), and in most instances, many if not all, of the drones used will have the same carrying capacity and range. For instance, all the drones used may be identical type drones. However, because the delivered products may vary in size and weight, some of the drones may essentially be underutilized and/or the overall power use or consumption of the system will not be optimized, potentially limiting the travel ranges and/or carrying capacities of the drones.